The House of Blue Mangoes (22 page)

Iyer took no notice of Abraham’s warning.

‘Aiyah, I’m not preaching sedition or treason. Or maybe I am. But what we’re saying is that India is for us Indians. We need to support Indian enterprises, wear Indian fabrics, have Indians making decisions on our behalf, not have a few white men rule this land with little concern for us.’

‘The English have ruled us, true, but they have ruled us wisely. Before they came it was village against village, rajah against rajah . . .’

‘Respectfully, aiyah, I must interrupt and disagree. Look at your own village, your own district. Year after year the rains have failed, the crops wither, there is threat of famine. And all the white man does is raise taxes and turn a deaf ear to our cries. So what do we do? We chant mantrams and perform ineffectual rituals to the Gods asking for rains, money, grain for crops and to feed our families, while never forgetting to bow to the white man, our latest God, for fear that we will incur his wrath. Imagine if we had our own people responsible for us. If they failed us we could challenge them, not genuflect before them . . .’

‘Enough of this city talk. We are peaceful people, and I am a responsible official. I will have nothing to do with this sort of thing.’

Iyer restrained himself with an effort. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you, aiyah, but will you at least come to our meeting?’

‘No, no, I’m sorry, I can’t do that.’

‘I’ll come, I’ll come,’ Aaron said.

Abraham said nothing; he had long ago given up trying to control his nephew.

As they walked back to town, Iyer told his young friend stories of revolution and martyrs, firebrands from the east and the north who were rousing the cowed soul of the south. He told him of the split in the Congress Party between the Moderates who believed in appeasement and the Extremists. Names like Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai fell from his lips like incantations and they ignited the imagination of the listener.

They strolled across the bridge towards Meenakshikoil. The town now boasted a boarding house (where Iyer was staying), a high school, three hotels – a military hotel, an idlisambhar place, and one which served quick-fried snacks and speshul tea-kaapi all day long – and an impressive compound of government buildings, all this a result of the authorities deciding to make the place a full-fledged taluqa headquarters, with a tahsildar instead of a deputy tahsildar in charge. Shanmuga Vedhar had been transferred to Ranivoor soon after the riots, and the new man, a Brahmin, had been thoroughly vetted with regard to his caste affiliations; the authorities were determined, if at all possible, to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy.

They stopped at the tea shop and ordered two speshul kaapis. As Iyer talked, his stories filled Aaron’s mind. Before they parted, Aaron promised the older man that he would help with his meeting in Meenakshikoil, to be held the following day on the outskirts of town, well clear of the police station and the tahsildar’s office.

All the next day Iyer, and Aaron and his friends, met people, inviting them to come to the meeting, where the lawyer promised they would hear about how to get what they wanted from the Government. Nervous that the authorities would break up the meeting, Iyer enjoined secrecy on all those who were invited; the presence of Aaron and his gang ensured compliance.

By six-thirty that evening, while there was still enough light in the sky, about a hundred people had gathered in a large open piece of ground where the Abel Circus was due to pitch its tents in a few days’ time. Aaron and his friends, seven of them, positioned themselves behind Iyer.

‘Breathes there a man amongst you who would rather not do his duty, as Krishna reminded Arjuna on the battlefield?’ With that opener, Iyer rapidly began expanding his thesis that the white man was a blemish on the brown face of the motherland. He presented a fine figure as he stood in front of the townspeople, but it was soon evident that he was not a practised public speaker, and he quickly lost his listeners. Aaron was beginning to get worried, but his anxiety lessened when Iyer took off on a new tack: the sacrifices made by patriots in the cause of the nation. This promised to be good meaty stuff, but again Iyer’s inexperience showed. Instead of dramatizing his stories, he related the exploits of the martyrs in a dry, bloodless way. He rambled on about how the white man’s seeming invulnerability had been exposed by the Japanese; he ranted about the differences between the old men of the Congress and the Madras Mahajana Sabha and young Extremists like himself.

‘Rise up, brothers and sisters of Meenakshikoil and Chevathar, as our great patriotic poet Subramania Bharati has said,’ Iyer roared, pumping his fist for emphasis. In the thickening twilight, Aaron could see many of the listeners glancing about or chatting among themselves. Some had even begun to drift away. He stepped up to Iyer and said urgently, ‘Anna, talk about local issues. Otherwise you will have no support here.’ Iyer looked annoyed at the interruption but, to Aaron’s relief, took his advice. The heroes of the Russian revolution were skated over, and he began to talk of water shortages and famine, taxes and the law of land.

The effect was immediate and electrifying. Iyer spoke with conviction of the ills besetting the region, and then said at the top of his voice, ‘And what must every one of us do? We must fight this injustice. We must strike directly at the heart of the evil Empire by denying them our money, the fruits of our labour, and by brushing aside the white man’s goods, his businesses, and supporting our own. And brothers and sisters of Meenakshikoil and Chevathar, by the will of God, the opportunity will present itself next week. When the Abel Circus comes to town, not a single one of you must go to it. Aaron and his friends will lead you in this action. Vande Mataram.’

Aaron’s eyes snapped towards Iyer. The half smile with which he had been watching the crowd as it absorbed his new friend’s speech vanished, to be replaced by a look of incredulity. Boycott the Abel Circus! The show that they had been thinking of for weeks! The women’s marbled white thighs flashing in front of their greedy eyes, engorging their imagination, their fantasies! Abruptly, he was afforded a pitiless insight: revolution always demands of its standard-bearers sacrifices greater than they can afford or comprehend, offering in return only the promise of an imperfectly understood, endlessly receding ideal. But, despite the crushing disappointment he felt, he thrilled to the idea of fighting for a cause, no matter that he didn’t understand it. Besides, Iyer had caught his imagination. He reminded him of his Joshua-chithappa, with his passion and idealism.

With these thoughts running through his head, he stepped up beside Iyer and said firmly, ‘My friends and I will ensure that Abel Circus does not have a single customer here.’

36

‘Yesu Christuveh, Rachel is Your daughter, please do not let a single slip, a single mistake damage her prospects. Lord, in Your infinite wisdom, mercy and benevolence, bless Your daughter bountifully.’ Daily, having placed the responsibility squarely in the Lord’s hands, Charity tried to do everything humanly possible to ensure that Rachel’s wedding passed off without a hitch. She would wake up even earlier than usual, double the amount of time she spent in prayer, and spend every other waking moment cooking, stitching and generally bustling about organizing the dozens of little things that needed to be done. A traditional marriage was an exhausting, complicated, expensive business, and she wouldn’t know a moment’s peace until the vows were exchanged. Bridegrooms knew their value, as did their families, and showed their displeasure at the smallest provocation. Why, barely three weeks ago, the marriage of Savitri’s daughter had been called off because the payasam at the engagement ceremony hadn’t been sweet enough. Her friend had been devastated. ‘My daughter’s value in the marriage market has plummeted. Maybe she is destined to be unmarried for the rest of her days. What sin have I committed to suffer such a fate?’ she had wailed. Even as she’d comforted her friend, Charity’s mind had gone into overdrive – not only would she need to oversee the preparation of the payasam at Rachel’s engagement ceremony personally, she would need to have back-up plans ready if for some reason the dessert didn’t pass muster. Perhaps she could offer a gold chain of extra thickness to the bridegroom, maybe more dowry, although she would have little to fall back on once the marriage expenses were met.

She had begun preparing for Rachel’s marriage the moment Daniel had returned to Nagercoil, an LMP diploma to practise medicine stowed in his trunk. One morning, she had asked him hopefully whether he was ready to be married and had received his standard reply: ‘No marriage, not until I’m worthy of the name I bear!’ She had, Yesu forgive her, felt irritated by the remark. When would he shake off the past, take up his responsibilities, take care of his family? Forgive me, Lord, she’d thought, I’m so tired. It was at such moments that she missed Solomon the most. Daniel would have surely been married by now, and Aaron, who could tell about Aaron? And how much easier it would have been to attract suitors if it had been Solomon Dorai, mirasidar and thalaivar, whose children were to be married, rather than the daughter of a widow, herself the daughter of a retired headmaster.

She could have got carried away, but Charity had spent her life stowing her fancies away behind an enormous pragmatism, so she’d composed herself and said to her son: ‘If neither of you boys want to be settled, it’ll have to be Rachel. If we leave it too long, we’ll never find a good match.’ Her tone must have been acerbic, for Daniel had looked at her, startled, then said, ‘Yes, amma, let’s look for a boy immediately.’ The marriage network began to hum and within a fortnight they had received a proposal they liked. Ramdoss was a clerk in the Collector’s office in Madura, and was distantly related to Jacob’s sister’s husband. The dowry was proposed, negotiated and agreed upon. It would stretch Charity’s slender finances but there could be no compromise. Soon after, Ramdoss’s mother, sisters and a brace of aunts announced their intention to visit. Charity cut down even further on her sleep as the visit approached and on the last night she didn’t sleep at all. It was the first big hurdle to be negotiated if the marriage was to take place.

Ramdoss’s mother and sisters resembled each other to a great degree – exceedingly short, but as if in compensation slim, fair and pretty. As they came up the path to the front door Charity thought to herself that they looked for all the world as if they were swarming along the ground rather than walking on it. She smiled and welcomed the ladies, offered them refreshments and gifts, and then Rachel was led in, beautiful and grave, dressed in her third-best sari, a shimmering peacock-blue Conjeevaram. Charity thought she looked exquisite, but the thought was immediately knocked off its perch by others:

Ramdoss’s mother was asking Rachel the usual questions. Did she sing? Did she dance? Could she cook? Rachel could do all these with a fair degree of proficiency but was there a Tamil bride who couldn’t? Charity’s nervousness increased. Everything depended on what Ramdoss’s mother would do next. To everyone’s surprise she beckoned Rachel closer, made room beside her on the newly bought cane sofa and asked quietly: ‘Will you be able to make my son happy, daughter?’

Consternation among the various relatives of the bride’s family. Where was this woman from? Happiness? What sort of question was that? Of course, everyone wanted to be happy but the only things that really mattered were: Was she fair? Was she too tall? Was she of the right age? Did the caste and sub-caste match? Could she bear sons? Was the dowry handsome? Did her family have the right status? A muted buzz rose in the small room. Charity alone smiled as Rachel raised her head and said, ‘Yes, mami, I’ll make him happy. There will be no other aim in my life.’ That was all, but it was enough. Ramdoss’s mother leaned forward, broke off a bit of coocoos, and nibbled at it, signifying that the girl had been accepted.

The date for the engagement was fixed for January. Although the first hurdle had been cleared, the next months would be tense, for there was no telling what could upset the frail connection that bound the two families. Charity welcomed hordes of relatives to the little cottage, fed them, and put them up in various houses around town. Some of them would have an active part to play in the wedding; the rest would form the necessary backdrop to a successful alliance.

By the time the day of the engagement arrived, the cottage had been completely taken over by relatives. It was too small to hold the anticipated number of guests, so a pandal had been erected under the enormous cashew-nut tree in the backyard.

There were seventy people in the bridegroom’s party, and they arrived in the midst of much gaiety and confusion. They were ceremoniously welcomed and duly installed under the pandal where they sweated gently in the mild heat of a Nagercoil winter. The shouts of cooks and other servants, the screams of small children as they raced about among the adults, the cawing of crows, the chattering of squirrels and mynahs, all the commotion and bustle narrowed and flowed towards the still centre of the afternoon – the moment when the bride would see her prospective husband for the first time. Charity escorted Rachel, clad in a dark red sari, out of the house. Her head bowed, the bride-to-be concentrated hard on the ground. She had spent months now dreading and anticipating this moment. Would he be handsome? Would his eyes be kind? His mouth shapely? Would he be fair and brave? And would he make her heart race? All through the morning as she’d been bathed, dressed, powdered and decorated, Rachel had been dreaming of the moment when she would raise her eyes to his. Then she looked into Ramdoss’s strong-jawed, open countenance and exploded out of her trance with joy. But she permitted herself nothing more than a small smile, then immediately lowered her head. Charity, who stood directly behind her, saw the young man’s eyes widen in appreciation and for just a moment felt wistful as she remembered her own first meeting with her husband. She had been a mere child, and it had all been so confusing at first.